Winamp 3, Good Riddance...
In a setback to Nullsoft's plans, Winamp3 in March gave way to the earlier Winamp 2.x version, pending a broader overhaul that will incorporate aspects of both in Winamp 5. In the meantime, AOL has discontinued supporting plug-ins developed using Wasabi and will instead fold Winamp3 graphical interface designs, or "skins," into Winamp 2.x.
I just ran across this in the news. Good to see the Nullsoft developers are smart enough to listen to the community. I know they spent a lot of time working on WA3—and it's always hard to turn your back on code you've spent a lot of time developing—but let's face it, WA3 blew. I upgraded for like a day, but quickly went back to WA2.
I don't want lots of gimmicks with my mp3 player. I want a small thin visual interface and it should use as little system resources as possible. In my opinion, no other mp3 player has even tempted to switch from WA2—except for WA3 of course, which I had high hopes for.
BestBuy, Bad Idea...
I just went to BestBuy's website and got the screen below. Talk about bad ideas. Why would you purposly limit the number of users to your site—especially for an e-commerce site? Come on guys, why not pop a few more servers on the ol' server farm? This is ridiculous.
Open Source Code Ultimately Better?
Reasoning recently did a review of Apache's code and found that the defects per thousand lines of code were on par with commercial products in the same stage of development. Although the number of defects were slightly higher (by .02 per thousand lines of code,) Reasoning determined that the end result may turn out to be a better product due to the nature of open source projects—implying that bugs found are more likely to be addressed quickly by the public, since anyone has the ability to track down and repair the bugs.
"The open-source code seems to start at the same defect rate for early commercial code as well," Jeff Klagenberg, director of project management, said in an interview. "Over time, it can gain higher levels of quality. That appears to be because of the natural inspection process inherent in open source."
I hate to see blanket statements like this. I do think when an open source project has financial backing by a large company, that this probably holds true, but let's face it, there's only so much energy someone will put into a open source project before needing some kind of monetary return.
The KITTY Project: Virtual Keyboard
The KITTY (Keyboard Independent Touch Typing) Project is another new entry into the world of portable computing. The end result is a glove-like device that attaches to a something akin to a watch—which uses wireless technology to transmit keystrokes recorded by your fingers to a computing device. They've got a Flash demo of how the device works. Seems like it would be uncomfortable to type that way for long periods of time, but I already have carpal tunnel, so maybe that has something to do with it.
As expressed by Dr. Mehring from UC Irvine, the new device tries to give glove-based or finger-mounted systems a new shot at the portable input device market by taking advantage of the existing skills of its potential users. As of today, user acceptance for newly developed ultra-portable input devices which can provide high rates of data-input required for ever more powerful pocket computers is limited by the requirement imposed on the user to learn new ways of data input.
TMS: Unlocking Savant Intellectual Abilities
Robi posted a cool entry about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. His quotes come from FuturePundit.com, but I'd go read what Robi has to say. It's all very cool. Here's a quote:
Allan Snyder, director of Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney is using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to slow down or speed up various parts of the brain and by doing so appears to be able to unlock savant intellectual abilities dormant in many minds.
As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general.
Bloggers Gain Libel Protection
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, web site operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.
Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.
I think it's good that bloggers can be free to quote sources without having to worry about repercussions if the source is wrong, but this means you really have to research blogs you read to ensure that you feel that the information the blogger reports is trustworthy.
This really isn't any different than it has been w/the web, but I think many people new to the culture have a tendency to trust the information they read on the web as being accurate. I think we become somewhat accustomed to trusting things we see in print as being automatically accurate. However, you can't make that assumption with the web. You really need to research what you read and eventually you'll start to form opinions on what sources you can trust and which ones you can't.
Video Games Get Updated Rating System
Four new categories designed to specify different types of violence have been added to video game ratings.
Effective immediately, "cartoon violence" will be defined as when "a character is unharmed after the action has been inflicted." "Fantasy violence" is when the actions involve "characters in situations easily distinguishable from real life."
While I definitely think it's worth having some rating system, it doesn't seem like enough parent's pay attention to it. While I think Grand Theft Auto series is great (Vice City is awesome,) it's definitely a game that should be only played by adults. I've seen way to many kids convince their parent's there's nothing wrong with it. My kids will probably hate me, because I'll know as much about the games they want as they do. :)
Popovich's In Town/Nicholas Walking...
The Popovich's came in to town Sunday—they're going to be staying at the Gazvoda's for the week. Since Jenn & I were out and about all day Sunday, last night was the first time I got a chance to visit with them. (Honestly, I wouldn't have contacted them on Sunday anyway, I'm sure they just wanted to kick back and relax for the day.) Eric & Krista were already over at Todd & Monica's house when Todd called me. Jenn had some reading to do and Tuesday's are here long day (w/work and then school right afterwards,) so she decided to stay home.
Nathan was already asleep when I got there, but Nicholas was still up. When I walked in the room, Nicholas' eyes just let up and he got this huge smile. There's something about a baby smile that can wipe away even the worst of moods—not that I was in a bad mood yesterday, I wasn't, but those smiles make you forget about everything else on your mind. Jennifer Popovich, Krista and Monica were all in the living room together.
Monica was giving him his bottle when I came in. I ended up taking over the feeding—which itself is so sweet and innocent. When you give him his bottle he holds your hand (or finger) with one hand and then he gently caresses your arm with the other—you can just tell he's going to be very empathetic, caring and kind to others. He then would also put his fingers up to mind—he seemed to be comparing the differences in the size of our fingers. First, he'd put his finger against mine length-wise, then he'd just push his finger tip to mind. You could just tell he was processing something.
Track My Days Left Being Employed!
I added a little "Employment Tracker" to the top of the page which will countdown the number of days I have left at my current job—provided they don't decide to walk in and shorten my stay further. :)
Article: Slammer Virus
Wired Magazine has a cool article on how the Slammer Virus really brought the 'net down to it's knees.
Article: Slammed!
PHP 5.0.0 Beta 1 Released
PHP 5 has gone into public beta 1. It's been a while since I've used PHP, so I'll probably try to check this version out in my spare time—which I may have an abundance of in the coming months.
One of the key new features of PHP 5 is it support for Abstract Classes and Methods. While this is nice and all, I'm not sure that PHP is the right language to be doing intensive business logic in. I view PHP much like I view ColdFusion—being primiarily a presentational language. Granted, CFMX now has components, but Java just seems like a more natural choice to rely on for enterprise level processing.
"Do Not Call" Registery Now Online
While the "National Do Not Call Registry" went online today—at least according to their website. The site has been very unresponsive most of the day. I suspect their either having load problems with the site—or somebody's flooding the site w/packet requests trying to crash the server.
If you're not sure what the "Do Not Call" registry is, then go check out my previous blog entry. In a nutshell, this is the Gov't sponsered list that you sign up to in order to get telemarketers to stop cold calling you. I'm putting my number on there—you should too!
National Do Not Call Registry
My job has been "abolished"...
Ok, so last night I'm sitting at my desk getting a lot of work done—I'm finishing up some contract work that's due Monday. Low and behold I get an e-mail from the director of our organization—he wants to meet with me in the morning. I immediately have a bad feeling about this—especially considering the fact he's never sat down and talk to me. Anyway, I sent an IM to a follow co-worker in my department to see if he got a similar message, and he did. Again I'm thinking to myself, "this isn't good."
You see finances at my current employer have been pretty bad. We had a former director who pretty much spent all of our capital and used up our reserve funds like they were going out of style. On top of that, there's been legislation on the table at the State level that essentially says: Gov't funded entities can't compete with private industries. I understand this and from an entrepreneur standpoint, but this has pretty much tied our hands with who we can do business with as a web group working for my current employer. So the last year has been pretty rough—at least as far as bringing in real cash to the department. We've stayed busy, but it's all been very nickle and dime projects—enough to keep you busy, but not enough to really cover costs. We already had one round of layoffs last year, and although management had insisted that there we no foreseeable cutbacks in the future, I've been through this before (although never have been affected by layoffs,) so I know how the process works—there's almost always a second round of layoffs.
Anyway, there's been a lot of buzz around the office. Quite frankly, every since last October-ish, my group has been through a roller coaster of emotions. One week it looks like our jobs are secure, the next it looks like we won't make it until the end of the week. We're in the middle of several contracts that would taken us through December, so as of recent time, I thought we'd be safe until the end of the year. (Also, since our fiscal year starts July 1st of each year, I figured they would have down layoffs to coincide with people ending their tenure at the end of the fiscal year.)
Home Phone Outage: SBC Can Bite Me...
SBC/Ameritech—or whatever they're called now—has really pissed me off. I haven't recieved my last two bills—which are supposed to be sent electronically. Anyway, the bills hadn't shown up for the past couple of months (May & June) via e-mail. I didn't notice in May that I hadn't paid the bill. Normally I rely on getting the bill to remind me of it and when it never showed up, it just slipped my mind. Well, I didn't get a June bill electronically either, but I got an invoice-looking envelope (SBC's bills come in a very distinct envelope) from them around the June 20th. I assumed this was my June bill, so put it aside to pay after I get paid this Friday. Granted, I should open all my mail the day it comes in, but the majority of the stuff I get is junk mail and unless the letter jumps out at me that it needs my attention, I'll open everything up later on.
Anyway, SBC decided to disconnect my home phone Monday night because I hadn't paid the bills—which was essentially just one month missed, May (since the June bill isn't due yet.) I can see shutting off service if I've gone months without paying, but the bare minimum that a phone company should do is to call you to warn you of disconnect service.
So, anyway, SBC wants like a $36 service fee to re-activate the account. I told them that while I certainly should have noticed not getting a bill, them not calling me before disconnect was extremely bad customer service. My response from them was "How do we know that a billing problem has occurred if you don't call us?" Well, my answer to that would be, "Well, the fact that a customer under good standings suddenly didn't pay his bills." That's really besides the point, the bare minimum they should have done is called and left a message—a machine calling would have been fine. If it would have been flagged to my attention, I would have called them immediately.
Free Software: Xenu's Link Sleuth™
Today on CF-Talk, Scott Wilhelm posted a link to a good link checker called Xenu's Link Sleuth. The price is right on the program—it's free—and from the brief playing around I did with the software, it seems to do a really good job of spidering dynamic web sites. So, if you looking for a good link checker/validator, check it out.